It hit with a clang.
“You got water all over me!” Betsy screamed, scrambling back from the table. “Oh my God. I have to change—” She ran out of the room.
Jolene slumped into her chair.
“You made a mess, Mommy,” Lulu said, frowning. “The floor looks like a lake.”
Jolene just sat there, stunned.
“Mommy? You made a mess,” Lulu said again, sounding scared. “I want my daddy.”
“Who gives a shit?” Jolene snapped.
Lulu started to cry. “I want my daddy NOW!”
Betsy came back downstairs, dressed now in jeans and a white hoodie. She picked Lulu up. They stared down at Jolene.
“Well?” Betsy said to her mother.
“Well what?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Jolene felt bitterness well up. She wanted to hold it back, be a good mother, but she couldn’t stop herself. The anger and edginess overtook her. “What’s wrong with me?” She held back from screaming do you not see?
Outside, the school bus chugged up to the driveway, gearing down to a stop.
Betsy screamed and dropped Lulu, who hit the ground hard and started to cry. “She hurt me! She hurt me!”
Betsy ran to the kitchen door and flung it open. “Wait! Wait!”
But it was too late. Jolene heard the bus driving away.
“I’m late,” Betsy shrieked, stomping over to her. “Now I’ll have to walk into first period late. Everyone will stare at me.”
Lulu wailed. “I’m hungry. I want my daddy.”
“Well?” Betsy demanded. “Are you just going to sit there?”
That did it. Jolene grabbed the chair’s wheels and spun around. “What the hell did you say to me? Believe me, being late to school is not a tragedy, Betsy.” She lifted her residual leg up. It twitched upward; the empty pant leg did a little dance. “This is a tragedy. Make your sister breakfast. Yia Yia will be here in a little while. She can take you to school.”
“You said you’d be fine,” Betsy yelled, her cheeks pink. “But you’re not. You can’t even take care of us. Why did you even come back?”
“And you’re a spoiled brat.” Jolene gripped the wheels and rolled away from them. As soon as she was in the office, she slammed the door shut. Getting up, she hopped over to the bed and fell into it with a groan.
She wanted to call her best friend, say I just yelled at my daughter and she yelled at me. Tell me I’m not a bitch … tell me she is … tell me I’m going to be okay …
Through the closed door, she could hear Lulu’s crying. Betsy was trying to soothe her. They were probably huddled together, looking at the closed door, wondering who in the hell the woman behind it was. They knew their mom hadn’t come home from war. Not really. The woman who’d come home was a stranger to all of them, herself most of all.
I want my daddy.
When had Lulu ever wanted comfort from Michael?
It was yet another change. While Jolene had been gone, the heart of her family had shifted. She’d become marginalized, unimportant. Michael was the parent who comforted and cared for them now. The parent they trusted.
She heard a knock at the door and ignored it.
The door opened. Mila came into the room. She was dressed for work in jeans and an oversized denim shirt and the green canvas apron. Her black hair was hidden beneath a blue and white bandanna. She walked toward the bed, sat down on its edge. Leaning forward, she brushed the tangled hair from Jolene’s eyes. “A warrior doesn’t run to her bedroom and hide out after one lost battle.”
“I’m not a warrior anymore, Mila. Or a wife, or a mother. In fact, who the hell am I?”
“You’ve always been so hard on yourself, Jolene. So you’re having a hard time and you dropped a pan of water and you yelled at your daughters. Big deal. I yelled at Michael all the time when he was a teenager.”
“I didn’t used to yell at them,” Jolene said quietly, feeling a tightening in her stomach.
“I know. Honestly, it wasn’t natural.”
“They’re scared of me now,” she said, sighing. “I’m scared of me.”
Mila gave her a knowing smile. “We all knew it would be hard to have you gone, but no one told us how hard it would be when you came back. We’ll have to adjust. All of us. And you’ll have to cut yourself some slack.”
“I’ve never been good at that.”
“No, you haven’t. Now, get up and get dressed. We’re leaving for PT in twenty minutes.”